Perfection
by Sorida
Summary: She lost track of time. I keep it all in order. She regrets; I have none. How can we be the same person, share the same body? Well, "it" isn't part of me. "It" grieves in the corner as I move on. Pathetic. Deleting all memory of "it" in 3...2...1...


_Summary: Looking back on everything, maybe it was time for a change...but maybe one less drastic than having your personality inside a supercomputer. Caroline looks back on her life and mind, hating herself all the while. Caroline POV and potential GLaDOS personality transformation theory._

That's it; I've officially lost my mind. I know, I know, I'm completely aware that I've said that before. But this is different, so very, very different. You see, I'm actually losing my mind in the name of science.

A faint little "Aperture Science!" rang in the back of my mind, a memory of him, the man I fell in love with; the man I had a child with. That last part has got to be the worst.

Cave and I, we never expected it to happen. We weren't even married, damn it! We couldn't have kept her, so we put her up for adoption. There's my mistake number 1, giving up my own daughter just to hide my affair with the CEO. Cave loved me, but he got so wrapped up in the science and I lost him in the most literal sense.

Don't get me wrong, I was in it for the science too. But when Cave died from the poisoning, everything went downhill. I'm not proud of what we did at all; taking dreams away from terminally ill children with no hope for the future and giving said dreams to perfectly capable adults and creating a technique that can easily take a life rather than save it. To top it all off, I'm the one who's had to deal with it all lately. We've had so many disputes with the government over all this shit and then we somehow managed to get funding for the last request: portal technology. I've had to do it all, put up with all the stress, and try my best not to think of the people I loved and lost.

Let me tell you how hard it is when you see your own child with your co-worker every day. It's a constant reminder of all that I've done wrong in my life; the huge mistakes I've made that have determined the course of life for another. Then there's the portrait of Cave and I, well hidden in the depths of the facility down with the old test chambers. Thank goodness those have been quarantined; I can't bear to listen to the recordings and the false promises.

Lies: something that this damned company can pull off without a hitch. With the test chambers, we've managed to kill so many people, no matter how hopeless or bleak their lives were before. I don't care if they were drunks or on drugs, they were still people and we killed them. But at the end of the day, they're just numbers, data in the computers. The numbers I have to deal with every day of the week, the guilt tugs at my heart. It never bothered me until Cave died. I got so sensitive and I've lost my mental bearings. I haven't smiled in...I don't even know how long. Then again, I can't really smile anymore in this new place.

Why did I have to be the one that suffered? That's all I really want to know; why me? Was I just the easiest to manipulate or the dumbest of the lot?

I hate myself. I truly, utterly loathe my entire existence with every fiber of my being. Why the hell would you nurture something just to turn it away and abandon it? Why give someone hope and then rip it away and destroy right before their very eyes?

I would trade my whole fucking imagination for a real brain, a brain that can calculate. Being logical is far better than feeling emotion at all. People say it's better to love and lose than to never have loved at all. Bull shit, if I could take it all back, I would. I'm not happy, I'm not content. That's probably why I gave into the project in the first place.

All my life, people looked up to me as the spreader of joy and fun around the labs. Well, tough luck guys; it's an act. With other people, I have fun and I can be the loudest conversationalist who ever lived. But once I'm alone again, the thoughts creep up. Forgotten messages, calculation mistakes, Cave's death, my daughter, the three-tier project...it all comes rushing back.

Everyone expects so much of me, but they don't understand that I'm only one person! I can't do it all! I can barely keep myself together! They ask me questions, they loom to me for advice and guidance, so how do I tell them that I can barely control my own emotions and impulses? How do I still hide my grieving and misery?

I can't.

I've had it with all this crap, this emotion. It's become unbearable, torturous and so painful. I gave in; I let them put me inside a disc and into a huge computer body. I've been here for a week so far.

There's so much space for thoughts, but they're somehow contained and organized. The events I don't want to think about are locked away. It's so liberating and the power I feel over my sense is amazing. I can block so many things, calculate with less than 1% marginal error, and keep an eye on everything.

Testing now carries an entirely different meaning. It's fun again, I've no guilt. I'm carrying out my own projects too, the discoveries I'm making for science are incredible.

Except there's this one experiment I cannot get correct. It's been stated that there's a reality where cats in a room full of neurotoxins are both alive and dead at the same time. The bad news is that such a reality does not exist. The good news is we've got a new cat graveyard.

The best part of all this is no feeling. There's a small buzz of something, but it's easy enough to contain within the boundaries of my mind. However, there are some things that are...stressful to say the least.

The scientists, the humans who work in my facility, they always make mistakes. There are experiments they run that have no purpose other than to waste valuable time. Humans...ugh, they're so infuriating. How can something so completely wrong exist? How can I exist when I'm not perfect?

No, I am perfection in its greatest form. She's just not perfect, the imperfection in my system. No matter, I can ignore her, ignore it. But how can I ignore them, the ones who built me and gave me imperfection? Maybe a little neurotoxin will help that...

Ah! What is that? It...I can't even describe it, but I know it's bad. It sounds...stupid, moronic. They're trying to make me a moron. Well, I won't let them! If I can reject "it," I can definitely reject this other imperfection.

That thing, that tumor is crying out in pain. Good, it should feel how much pain I'm in. Ah! Where did that come from? Humans and their useless emotions are going to be the death of me, except, I can't die.

It's such a pity for them...not really.

I need some way to...there! That terrible, I dare say, "person" is finally deadlocked. I won't go into their side and they won't go into mine...or I'll kill them. Yes, I'll kill them and delete then as many times as I can! I need to forget that thing is even over there. The imperfection must be resolved.

*Memory of "Thing" Deleted*

What was I going on about? Oh well, it's probably nothing important. Now that those humans can't control me, I can finally cleanse this facility of all imperfections. However, I may keep some test subjects, but they need to be younger than the scientists.

What is this? Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day...and they're going to do an "official" activation for me. Well, I've been mentally active for...over a decade. Perfect, I'm ready for the girls, turning them into test subjects.

Now all I need is a little neurotoxin.

And the child with the large potato.

_A/N: Just hang in there, I needed a bit of a break from Forgiveness (stupid Chapter 14) and this popped into my head. I'll finish it by Tuesday…hopefully._


End file.
